Second-place qualifier Josh Brookes has revealed that problems with his bike’s quickshifter plagued him in all three qualifying sessions this afternoon.

The Australian was only 0.081s off Glenn Irwin’s pole position lap of 1’24.628, but 0.059s ahead of Jake Dixon, who will line up beside him on the front row in third tomorrow.

But Brookes admitted that along with rear grip issues, he and the McAMS Yamaha squad still have some things to sort out ahead of the first race.

“For some reason, my quickshifter stopped working in the first outing of qualifying,” he said. “We changed the ECU setting thinking it was a fault with the setting and went out for Q2 and it was still there.

“So we changed the unit for Q3 and it was still there. There’s still an underlying problem but the guys I work with are clever, they’ll figure it out.

“We put a package together that’s the best we’ve had this weekend. It feels like it’s stopping good, it feels like it’s turning okay, but it just seems to be spinning the tyre and not making the grip.”

Despite the problems, the former champ says he’s happy with his and the crew’s work to get him on the front row - a vital position for tomorrow's 20-lap scrap.

“We weren’t worried before qualifying, but there was some concern that we wouldn’t have the speed we were expecting. The practice hasn’t gone as perfectly as we liked, we’ve tried a few things and gone a little bit forward then a little bit back.

“But it’s extremely important to be here and to have the speed to put ourselves on the front row. I felt like we did a good job.”